Answer My Prayers
by UltraM2000
Summary: Gojyo Birthday Fic! Young Gojyo prays, and once in a while, those get answered. Angsty, fluffy piece.


Disclaimer: UltraM2000 owns nothing. Except perhaps the doe that comes to visit. ;)

_Answer My Prayer_

_Kannon please send my brother home…_

He'd been beaten. Again. Nothing unusual. This time Gojyo had spilt a drop of soya sauce onto the table, small black bead on deep black wood, and next thing he knew he was on the floor with a smashed dish beside him and mom was screaming the bad words he'd never dare to say.

He had not shed a tear as she threw him roughly on the nearest bed, her own, that smelled of sweat and spit and vomit and more frighteningly, Jien, the great leather belt sang through the air with a snap-crack like an executioner tightening the rope and ripped through the tender skin of his naked back, leaving seemingly oh-so-innocent scratches that would bleed and bleed later. He felt dizzy, having bitten his tongue once or twice sometime during the thrashing.

_Jien will come back…Jien will come home and he'll stop mom from doing this,_ his young mind repeated. Swish-crack. Pain flooded him again, and he bit his tongue for the third time. _Jiencomehomecomehomecomehomecomehommmmme… _

He still had not cried when the beatings stopped, when Jien's rough voice shore through the mayhem, and his very heartbeat throbbed along every raw, purpling wound in his back. He breathed in deep, desperate gasps as his mother sobbed wretchedly in Jien's arms and his elder brother looked twice as wretched, not sure whether to side with his unbalanced parent or his maligned sibling. He chose his mother, for the moment, and left Gojyo trembling on the bed, his wounds only now beginning to bleed slow, sticky pinpricks of red._ThankyouKannonJiencamehomecamehomecamehomecamehome…owww__!_

He prayed to Kannon, just before he went to bed like Jien said he should. At first he had asked that he could live until okaasan grew to love him. Then he'd altered that prayer to become a wish to live until tomorrow. Now he just asked the goddess not to let his mom hit him too hard. The death of hope is indeed saddening, and Gojyo was beginning to wonder if she really existed. If the Goddess of Mercy should appear to him one day, he swore he'd kiss her—on the lips, like in the movies… 

-----o0o----- 

He hadn't realised he'd fallen asleep until he moved a little and pain seared up his injured skin. A tiny mewl of pain escaped him as he moved, his head heavy with sleep still lingering and his mouth dry and tasting of bedsheet. Blood crusted at the corner of his mouth, and he licked it away, tasting the tang of iron in it. 

There was Jien-smell everywhere, and he had to get away. It wasn't in the right places. It didn't ease him at all as he got to his shaky legs. The door opened just then, and he froze, collapsing back on the hated bed. 

Thankfully, the dark shadow was Jien's. He'd recognise that spiky hair anywhere. Without another word, he scooped Gojyo up, frail-as-a-bird-and-weighing-as-much Gojyo, and strode back to the room they shared. It was his sanctuary, their sanctuary. Unfortunately their mother blocked the door. 

"Put that filthy brat down, Jien. He's not your problem." 

"He is now, ma," Jien said, digging one finger into the small of Gojyo's back. Gojyo hated that sharp poke, but he knew it meant act unconscious and he complied. The sounds echoed in the darkness of his skull as his brother and step…his mother exchanged heated words. 

"I don't see why you always care about the brat." She was pouting. "He's not our concern. I wouldn't even send him to school if it wasn't free and it didn't keep him out of the house." 

"He _is_ our concern, ma! Dad said…" 

"Don't you mention that man in this house, young man." 

"He's my father and I'll mention him if I want to! He said take care of Gojyo, not beat him into pig slop!" 

"That is all he is fit for." 

"Ma! Look at him! He is bleeding, and all of these bruises—!" 

"You care about him more than you do me, Jien." 

"Oh noooo, _moth-ER_…" 

"…This half-demon bastard means more to you than your own flesh and blood! These arms rocked you to sleep when you were a baby, Jien, and they fed you and clothed you—" Good heavens, she was going to cry again.

_Don't cry okaasan don't cry don't just don't I'll do anything if you don't cry_

"That's not true, fuggit." Jien's nails make crescent indents in Gojyo's arm. He takes a breath, an exasperated one. "Ma if you don't stop this for a while I'll report the whole thing to the police." 

Trump card. She stops. "You wouldn't." Her voice is dry, flat and old. 

"I would. I can. I will." He sidesteps her, enters the room and slams the door. He makes no noise or move until he hears his mother's footsteps, tired, defeated, angry, shuffling away across the wooden floor. 

-----o0o----- 

Jien lays Gojyo gently on the bed, then opens a drawer and takes out old bandages, ones he has used all too often already. "God, be careful, y'little brat," he grumbles, but he says it with a loving undertone so the boy doesn't feel too bad. "Mom's losing it by the day. You have to watch your step." 

"Okay. I'm sorry." 

The scratches are bleeding badly now, laying scabs over scabs over scar. With the precision and speed of a well-seasoned dresser, Jien lays numbing antiseptic salve over the wounds, works it in and lays gauze and bandages over the boy's back, wrapping him tight. The tightness layers upon that building in his chest and throat, and Gojyo shivers. He doesn't know this feeling very well. 

"Don't cry, Gojyo." The voice of his brother is soft, rough along the edges but soothing, like an old blanket. 

"…'m NOT," he protests weakly as he gets up. The back still stings like billy-o, but the salve fuzzes everything over nicely and the Jien-smell is in the right place next to the Gojyo-smell on the right bed, so all seems well. 

"Hungry? You didn't eat." 

"Had lunch at school," he says flippantly. He doesn't want to worry his brother. 

"So you'd say no to…a nikuman?" Jien's eyes sparkle mischeviously. 

The gnawing hunger for sustenance betrays Gojyo, and he nods. A soft, white steamed bun, still warm (why is it still warm did he save it from dinner) appears, and the boy seizes it ravenously. He doesn't bother to pick off the skin like Jien does but scarfs the whole thing down. The pork is flavourful, the pastry soft and yielding under eager teeth. It is gone in a flash but his pride is too great to ask if there is another. 

"You want another one?" 

"You have another one?" 

"I got a whole packet before I came back. I had a hunch something like this might happen." 

Three meatbuns go down his throat before his hunger is sated. "Thank you, Jien," he whispers, sitting cross-legged on the bed. There is a long-forgotten warmth spreading across him. It is probably the first time in a long while he's had more than one meal in a day. Jien shrugs, watches his brother closely as if the moment he blinks, he will fall into a sleep deeper than any this world has to offer and he won't wake up. 

"You are absolutely ridiculous," the reply finally makes itself heard, which should pass for a 'you're welcome'. "Happy birthday, by the way." 

"Birthday—" It is then he remembers. Tucked somewhere in the recesses of his mind, lodged behind the knowledge of how to curl up and protect your head during an attack from okaasan and wedged between memories of feeling safe and his first fuzzy memories of a younger Sha Jien, is the little voice in his mind that tells him 10 years ago on the night of November 9th, a little half-demon entered the world and refused to die. Refusing to die, that is all that matters. He feels slightly embarrassed. Fancy not being able to remember your own birthday! 

"You got anything you want special?" Jien thumps his chest in what he must think is a manful gesture. Young Gojyo thinks it looks goofy, and hides his smile in the shadows. "Name anything." 

"Stay here," he promptly replies, one small, almost bony hand clutching Jien's A-shirt with sudden strength. How can the man refuse this simple request? 

"But it's still so early!" 

"Pleeeease _aniki_," he begs, and Jien melts completely. 

"You're nothing but trouble, brat." 

"Tough," Gojyo pouts. 

-----o0o----- 

Jien lies awake while Gojyo sleeps, head against his chest, his breath light and warm against him, his heart beating a steady reassurance I'm alive I'm alive Jien Jien and all well. The window is just beside the bed, almost level with it, in fact. Jien's lost count of how many times he used to climb over the sill and play in the garden late at night, how many times he'd pitched himself over that sill onto the grass below to sneak out for a quick drink. 

It is then _she_ appears. 

Jien freezes, and pinches Gojyo's arm. The boy starts awake, head darting up to see if his stepmom is standing in the doorway, glowering at them both with a look fit to kill. It is not. 

"I see the deer," Jien says softly, simply, and that's that. Gojyo's eyes grow wide, and he peeps out through the window. 

"I see the deer." 

She is small and shy, and lives in the forests not far from the brothers' house. She comes, sometimes, to graze on their unkept hedge and drink at the small spring that still flows from between the rocky well. The brothers have a game, and are keeping score within it to see who can spot her slender, dappled form first. Jien is catching up. 

The doe's ear flicks, and she turns to see a pair of wide, crimson eyes staring at her. She steps two paces back, then stops. Jien screws his eyes up in an expression of irritation. They have to pretend they can't see her when she does arrive, or she will go away. She is skittish, scared. Very much like certain emotions, running away when they are chased, coming unbidden, sweet and surprising. 

This time, however, she stays, and lies down in the garden, blinking sleepily and nibbling at the odd leaf. 

It's a magical sight, and Gojyo finds it hard to go to sleep. He does remember, however, as he drifts off, to place his hands together and mouth a prayer.

_A thousand blessings on Kanzeon Bosatsu…and Kannon-sama, please keep my brother here._

-----o0o----- 

In the morning, when he woke still safely in a snoring Jien's arms, feeling warm and safe and happy, Gojyo knew that for the moment, his prayers had been answered.

-----o0o----- 

**M2000: **Iya~! Happy Birthday Gojyo-_san_!  
**Gojyo: **Thanks, babe!  
**M2000: **No problem. I got you a birthday cake and stuff! *produces triple-layer orange-strawberry fudge torte*  
**Gojyo: ****||**O_o=|| OMG...That's one big cake.  
**M2000: **Because you're going to share it with your fans! Riiiiiight Gojyo-_saaaaan_?  
**Gojyo: **...Aw what the heck. OK. Girls get an extra piece! *blows out the candles and cuts the cake*  
**Hakkai: **M2000-chan, I thought you would write an, er...Gojyo/Houran piece.  
**M2000: **Ivaff gobing goo, Haffai-shan...*swallows cake* But you see, I couldn't think of any good ideas. And we need more Gojyo-DokugakuJien fluff, don't you think?  
**Doku: **I do. Sometimes. Now where's my cake, brat?  
**M2000: **Here, have my extra piece. Please R&R, minna!


End file.
